With the 4e Division Marocaine de Montagne

A star is immortalized in a rock face next to the Ill River in Vorarlberg. The superimposition of text fragments, archival artifacts, and historical maps reveals a view of the city of Feldkirch that is shaped by the presence and traces of an anti-fascist and anti-colonial Moroccan military division. This differentiates and challenges the dominant narrative of the history of liberation from the National Socialist regime and the subsequent French occupation in Vorarlberg.  

In the shadow of the French flag, the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division was involved in the campaign against fascism from 1943 to 1946 and thus in the liberation of Corsica, Italy, and Austria. Their mission took them from Marrakesh via Casablanca, Marseilles, Corsica and Rome to Feldkirch.  

Photographs of the unit under the Triumphal Arch after the liberation of Rome. Journeys along the river. Fragmented traces in the archive, stories, memories, and isolated studio portraits of the soldiers. In rock over the Ill, a pentagram is created – the only independently placed memorial of the division (now painted over in red outline by unknown persons). The story of a bridge being built. In 1946, the Moroccan division was replaced by a French one and disbanded (“Le Blanchisment”). However, the lives and complex realities of the children of occupation or liberation born at the beginning of the same year cannot be so easily whited out or suppressed; they bear witness to presences and historical entanglements.  

In the narrative, the French liberation and occupation determine Vorarlberg’s memory, while the Fourth Division remains vague in memory. A specific place becomes tangible; the sign in the stone becomes symbolically manifest. A complex political structure of fragile narratives of freedom, independence, and liberation opens up, spun over centuries, which become comprehensible beyond fixed temporalities. (Djamila Grandits)